World of Warplanes Dev QnA part 2

Hello everyone, part 2 of 2 is here. I hope most of your questions have been answered for now.

If you haven’t seen part 1 yet, i highly recommend you check it out here

Q: Are there any plans to fix the ramming mechanic? Since when can two WW2 airplanes collide and the “heavier” one is not totaled, i’m fairly certain both planes would be fubar. Im also fairly certain no sane pilot would ram other planes as a strategy to taking down an opponent.

World of Warplanes is a game, furthermore it is an arcade, not a simulator game. Realism is not the main goal, we aim for a healthy balance between the game being “realistic” and believable, and it being fun and approachable for a casual player.

Ramming mechanics in current form look like that intentionally. Lethal collisions are more realistic, but in most cases collisions in game happen when both players don’t see each other at all (someone flies into you from the side) or occasionally make a piloting mistake. In those situations lethal rammings would be way too unforgiving in our game, and the current design works well.

Lethal rammings are also imbalanced and unfair: imagine your own reaction if you pilot a GA, heavy or other huge durable aircraft with large HP pool and get sent to Hangar by a barely flying fighter with a couple HP left.

Q: I’m just wondering how bombs and rockets affect a plane’s maneuverability and airspeed compared to the previous version. Do they affect a plane’s stats just having them loaded or only when they are off cool down?

If you install bombs and rockets they produce constant negative effect on your aircraft’s flight parameters during the whole battle. It doesn’t matter whether the load is full, on cooldown, you used a part of it etc., the effect stays the same.

Q: Will an option be added to remove ALL movies/cinematics before, during, and after the battle?

There are 2 cornerstones that we base the whole design on. First: the game must be easy to learn and play for everyone, especially newcomers. Second: as many features as possible should be executed naturally and seamlessly, without pressing any keys, changing settings, etc. Sometimes these ideas contradict one another: despite WoWP not being a simulator there are still some quite complex mechanics and designs that need explaining to newcomers. Hence, hints on loading screens, pre-battle cinematics, etc. Moreover, soon we will add new hints and short tutorial videos. Of course, they won’t appear every time you play, and you will be able to close or disable them.

Upcoming patches will also make “skip cinematic” hotkeys more intuitive.

Q: Stats. WOWp doesn’t want external websites with stats but I’m missing some aspects in the current stats that WOWp gives. Mostly the evolution of my performance. Now they give only global stats. But why not period stats like 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, … At the moment it doesn’t matter with only a couple 100 games. But what about when I reach 10.000 games? My stats will be set in stone. It will be hard to improve my numbers by then. But if you give short increments you can see your improvement in time = motivation. Any reworks on the stats pages?

There are plans and ideas for rework and improvement of player profile pages on the Portal. It will include tracking personal performance, as well as other improvements based on extensive feedback we received from players.

We plan to start implementing these changes after updating the Portal main page, which is already in development. At the moment we estimate that new profile/statistics pages might be ready in second half of 2018.

Q: In-game currency. It seems that taking/ defending bases is the objective of the game. But it is still mindless shooting down planes that is most rewarding. Often you see the biggest profits in the losing team. Intended?

We are looking closely at statistics and yes, there are some economical issues where player actions that do not directly contribute to winning through capturing territories (like roaming between them and attacking enemy aircraft) can be much more rewarding. We have plans to tune the game mode itself somewhat, adapt class-specific tasks so that they are more easily completed and more rewarding. Economy system will also be rebalanced soon.

The main issue in terms of gameplay though is not that players can get a lot of credits for shooting down planes away from territories which doesn’t affect Conquest. It does affect it: aircraft that can’t reach a territory can’t capture it or disrupt actions of another team. Moreover it depletes respawns for enemy players and effectively removes them from the battle. This can be considered an efficient way to fight and win too, actually. So we’re not looking to remove rewards for such actions altogether, we would rather prefer to make them more meaningful in terms of the game mode.

Q: Why can’t I look in the hangar at the planes that I haven’t bought? I. So many games you can. You can in WOWs.

We can add this feature, but there are higher priority tasks right now.

Q: Those WOWs hates Belgium? Where is our flag? You have the one of Romania? Doesn’t seem hard to make the Belgian flag?

Our bad, we’ll add it ASAP. Furthermore we will double-check and add other European flags to the same pack.

Q: I was surprised that there weren’t crossover bundles between WOT, WOWs and WOWp for black Friday? Any plans for that?

Actually we didn’t ever have such crossover bundles in Europe or CIS, not only for Black Friday. It is an interesting idea and we discussed it internally but to implement it we need a lot of discussion, coordination and approvement between teams, so at the moment such bundles are “on hold”.

Q: When is the “Invite a friend” program gonna start?

Referral program is planned to be launched at some point in 2018, stay tuned.

Q: Are there plans for Clans in development? Airbase (similar to WoT and Wows), Clanwars, Clan battles.

Clan functionality is an endgame feature. At the moment we need to create endgame content and game mode for single players, then we’ll get to co-op meta gameplay that are clans. There are a lot of ideas.

Q: Any plans to recover 3 pilot flights?

This is quite possible. Since the current game mode requires coordination and tactics reintroducing 3-man flights might benefit the game. But we need to be careful so that those flights don’t become overpowered again which was the reason we limited them in the first place.

Q: Will you introduce any kind of tier 10 end game content?

Yes, we have some interesting ideas for end-game gameplay and content for 2018. Some of them are already being developed or prototyped. We will keep you updated once we have something tangible.

Q: 2.0 has been introduced on short notice and after a far too short test period, alienating a lot of the “veteran” players who wouldn’t have invested as much time and money (or any of both at all) in a WoWp the way it looks and plays now. Are there any plans to make up for their sudden loss of a game they enjoyed? Any plans to bring back 1.x game elements, battle modes and/or flight physics?

Some of the experience those veteran players might have lost and are yearning for will be brought back with new major updates and game modes. For instance we are working on a “hardcore” PvP dogfighting mode without respawns.

We will not bring 1.x back in the same form as it was, this is our final decision. The game needs to evolve and the former version did not give us any opportunity to do so.

Q: Any plans to add more nation tech trees? Italy? Romania? More French planes? Or even add these to existing trees like the Australian planes being on the UK tree?

Can’t say anything about full trees, but separate aircraft from other nations aside from those we currently have are probable.

Q: Any plans for overhauling the classes because of the changes in 2.0?

There are no plans to make significant changes to aircraft classes as archetypes in the game. Nevertheless we will keep an eye on statistics and feedback and make balancing passes and improvements for specific aircraft that need them. Additionally we will add more bombers, including researchable ones.

Q: Are there any plans to shorten the bomb and rocket reload for Multi Roles and GAAs? Multi roles have the problem that they turn into a worse fighter for 2 minutes after dropping their ordnance and maybe damage a few targets or at the best case scenario they can destroy 1-2 ground clusters. And GAAs just kill the first base with ease, then they have to resort to their guns for the second base and on the third one they have their ordnance back.

Maybe make it that each rocket or bomb takes maybe 10 seconds to reload, so if you have 8 rockets, it’s gonna take 80 seconds for a complete reload, but every 10 seconds you get a rocket etc.

The main damage source for MRF and GAA are their guns. Rockets and bombs are auxiliary armament in their case. They provide a periodic burst in damage that allows these aircraft to destroy most critical targets quickly, and as such they require tactical thinking to use in an optimal way. At the moment outboard armament for these classes works as intended. This doesn’t mean that we won’t reduce reloading time for some aircraft though, balancing pass is coming.

Q: Any plans to make boom and zoom aircraft relevant? It seems like TnB aircraft like the Zeros or Spitfires are doing very well while planes like the Me 209 V4 or J8M are doing rather poorly due to lack of firepower and really fast speeds. They just aren’t effective planes in the new meta.

Altitude fighters-interceptors simply need relevant targets. They will get them once new bombers enter the game.

Q: Asymmetrical maps seem imbalanced, one side always seems to have the upper hand on these. One team has one attack base and the other team has to defend their bases. Any plans to remove asymmetrical maps?

We have accumulated a lot of statistical data for all the maps and schemes. Based on it we will disable several asymmetric schemes that are most imbalanced and rework them.

That being said we still think that asymmetric schemes can be exciting and balanced. Achieving balance on them is much harder than on mirror schemes, but it’s possible.

Q: There are evidently a lot of aircraft flying around that aren’t available to most players. The Commonwealth Boomerang is a common base defence bot, and I think I even saw a Payen design once…

I’d like to know if not how to get them, at least why we CAN’T.

Aside from a couple of aircraft that we use for NPCs (the Ju 52 we used in 1.x tutorial, NPC bombers etc.) and limited machines that were used as awards for Alpha and Beta-testers all of the aircraft in game can be obtained via Specials, Limited Time Offers or often appear as prizes in marathons.

In Update 2.0.2 which is planned for winter holidays we will add a lot of rare warplanes to the pool of those available for purchase inside the game client. Other aircraft will eventually turn up in other Specials – keep track of the news.

Q: Will the Sh-Tandem from Beta ever return!?

Yes, it will.

Q: Are there plans to adjust the bot AI for fighters and multiroles? They seem to prioritize bombers and ignoring ground attacks quite often.

We intend to improve bot behaviour both in high-level strategic aspects like choosing correct territories and fulfilling their class-specific roles, and in tactical aspects like targeting specific enemies.

Q: Any ETAs on enabling replays?

At the moment we plan to enable them in Q2 2018. The number of improvements and features with higher priority is quite large.

Q: Are we gonna see a bigger variety in Defense Fighters as well as some similarly tiered ones like tier 9 AI Defense Attackers and Ta 183 vs normal tier 9s and so on, just to add variety to the same AI planes 2 tiers below you?

By design the defenders should:

Be significantly weaker than player aircraft – which is why they are 2 tiers lower than battle tier and have their parameters tuned.

Be based on aircraft models that are a) distinctly neutral and b) correlate with the battle setting (real-world region that the map is based on and design timeframe similar to player aircraft). For example, Tier 5 battle in Pacific setting would require defender aircraft from Japan, Australia or similar neighboring nations, built around 1940s.

At the moment not all battle tier and map combinations adhere to these design principles but we’re working on it.

Q: In your website message (https://worldofwarplanes.eu/news/two-point-oh/) with the release of WOWp V2.0 you also mention future big updates 2.1 and 2.2. Can you roughly give a period when you intend to release those updates. Are we speaking a couple of months? A 1/2 year? A year? Years? Never?

Just from the nature of these big updates we are very careful with any promises. There is A LOT to be done, and we’d rather say anything certain when we have everything close to final form. Keep your eye on news and development blog – we will provide updates there.

Q: Any plans to add more camouflages and more personalized visual customisation?

Visual customization and personification for player’s aircraft are one of the features that we’ve wanted to make for a long time. Unfortunately when choosing between improving main game mechanics, adding more content and visuals the former keep winning.

Q: Any plans to release Wowp on Steam?

In short, stay tuned. Can’t say anything certain yet.

Q: Any chance to increase the ability for a single person to carry? I have seen many people abandon the game since they feel like no matter how good they do, they can not achieve anything meaningful in the outcome of the battle.

It’s interesting to note that at the same time we’ve seen quite a lot of feedback that says that in 2.0 they actually started feeling that they can finally affect the outcome of the battle with their actions. Anyway, we’ll be making further improvements so that every player’s impact feels more significant.

Q: Any chance to see changes to Air to Air rockets, they really suck at the moment and aren’t even that useful against AI bomber squadrons. They are a waste of space on any multirole that can carry them, it’s what made the BV P.215 a decent plane, but whatever happened to them in 2.0 made them useless.

Yes, there definitely will be changes to rockets. That being said they will be aimed at making the AA rockets usable for the role they were historically created for — destroying huge four-engined bombers.

Q: Are loot crates gonna be reintroduced(without the airplane parts)? Cause they were a good idea

Certainly. The closest ones are planned for winter holidays, and we will have more at later dates.

Q: Is there any info about bringing WOWP to the console? We’re totally fed up of the WoT Devs and need something else to spend money on.

See part 1

Q: Any invite codes for new players wanting to try out new and improved 2.0 for NA like in wot/wows where u get prem time, gold, tank or ship

Yes, the practice of invite codes has not been discontinued. We will prepare new codes with interesting contents once we’re ready for an active promo campaign.

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14 comments on “World of Warplanes Dev QnA part 2”

First question was pretty stupid.
Making something more realistic isn’t the same thing as “fixing” something.
If WoWp want the arcady approach, let them do so. It should be obvious by now.

Other than that, I can say that dropping bombs actually do make your plane easier to fly.
I can confirm this, since my FW 109 always stalls if I do vertical climbs while holding bombs, but after dropping the bombs, I can do a vertical climb no problem.

I have also had instances where I was climbing without a problem, and my bombs suddenly were reloaded while climbing, and I instantly started stalling.

“We will not bring 1.x back in the same form as it was, this is our final decision. The game needs to evolve and the former version did not give us any opportunity to do so. ”

Not exactly true. We gave piles and piles of suggestions for making the game more playable, fun, noob-friendly, and manageable – none of them were implemented. In fact, those suggestions directly impacted some of the aspects of the game that people are still complaining about in the supposedly “evolved” 2.0 version.

You can even see them in this Q&A: imbalance between turn and altitude fighters, uselessness of multi-role fighters, imbalance between the impact of PvP (air to air) and PvE (air to ground) gameplay on outcomes, etc.

I don’t know about the other vets, but this is my biggest frustration – months and months of development time spent on remaking the game in a way that does not address any of the core issues that were present before.

didn’t even read further than the 1. question.
the reasoning of the devs is completely silly…
yes, please make the game an arcade game, but there is nothing believable about the current ramming mechanics…

not even going to touch the game with a hazmat suit until that shit is gone.
good luck trying to get the game up and running, but i doubt the current school of thought of the devs is doing the job.

What do you propose? Keep in mind we had both planes dead from collisions which was exploited (low hp fighter taking out full health ga) or resulted in friendly kills during furball collisions. We also had damage from falling debris.

“The main damage source for MRF and GAA are their guns.”
– There are several MRF’s which like to have a word with you. Not all MRF guns are designed for ground targets. Some MRF’s are designed to use their guns against aircraft and their bombs against ground targets. Those can’t really use their guns against ground targets at all…

“…they can not achieve anything meaningful in the outcome of the battle.”
– I think one can, especially after the squall line kicks in. A good fighter can take out enough of the enemy team to win the game, regardless of the actual score.

I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with wg’s solution to high altitude boom-n-zoom fighters. Most high altitude fighters have excellent airspeed to go with their high altitude performance. In order for the plane to achieve that, the plane sacrifices hp and firepower typically. This results in planes that get chewed up by rear gunners and can’t spin fight other fighters. Therefore, increasing bombers will not improve their performance. In fact, I’d argue it would make them even worse. If u want them to fight bombers at high altitude, u need to design the planes to eat the bomber’s rear guns more effectively or improve the firepower on their guns. Personally, I would just try making more balaned numbers of high altitude fighters and low altitude fighters. Heavies are designed to kill bombers, not fighters

Are there any plans to rebalance rear guns because they have better range than main armaments and have no overheating(which makes no sense) and deal more damage when the player controls them(again makes no sense), bombers like the a-26b can chew up same tier planes with their rear guns and very large health pool

As a long time WoTs player with 29k battles, I really enjoy the 2.0 game.

The number of real players seem to be increasing rapidly.

I enjoy this game so much, and most of my time is now spent on it, rather than WoTs.

The majority of the battles seem to be close in the end, and most of the planes seemed to be balanced.

Please be VERY careful when making changes to this game. WoT developers have screwed things up more and more, as they continue to introduce new patches, and the dwindling number of active players moving away from the game shows it.